Bare plural

From Glottopedia
Revision as of 13:22, 6 March 2008 by Luo (talk | contribs) (from Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Bare plural refers to a plural noun phrase without an overt determiner.

Examples

Cats, or pretty girls with blond hair are bare plurals.

Comments

Bare plurals can have a generic interpretation (in (i)) or an existential interpretation (in (ii)):

*(i) Cats are intelligent. *(ii) Cats ruined my garden.

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

Reference

Carlson, G. 1977. Reference to kinds in English. Ph.D. diss., University of Amherst.